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Want to learn more about our academic degree programs? Take a look at our Master of Divinity, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Ministry programs. Plus, learn about our unique Training & Mentoring program.

This Student Life section is the one-stop shop for students to get connected to activities that will feed your spiritual and social life as well as equip you with resources to jump-start your academic career.

Being a part of our Denver Seminary community is about connection. Whether you are an alumni, donor, or friend of the Seminary, we want to stay in touch and hope you'll take part in our programs and events.

Denver Seminary has a wealth of resources that are available to current students, alumni, and the local community. Here you will find access to the Denver Journal, Engage Magazine, and the various initiatives organized by the Seminary.

God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist

Dr. Douglas Groothuis' review of, "God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist," by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong.

William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist. Oxford University Press, 2003.

During the past twenty years, while many apologists and philosophers
have been debating (mostly among themselves) whether it is
theologically acceptable or philosophically credible to argue for the
existence of God, William Lane Craig has been on the road debating the
existence of God with some of the leading unbelievers of our day.
Through these encounters and his writings, both scholarly and more
popular, Craig has significantly revived the ancient and venerable art
of natural theology: the endeavor of employing rational arguments in
support of the existence of a monotheistic God. How far can these
arguments take us theologically toward the existence of the God of the
Bible? Perhaps the proof is in the philosophical pudding. One of the
best laboratories for answering this question is a rigorous
philosophical debate—exactly what this short but weighty book offers.

This time Craig takes on Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, a
well-established philosopher and a worthy opponent. The book is divided
into two sections. Craig first presents the case for God, receives
rebuttal by Sinnott-Armstrong, and then responds to the rebuttal. The
order is reversed in the second section in which Sinnott-Armstrong
begins by arguing against God. Although the book is introductory, both
philosophers wade into deep waters and raise issues warranting further
reflection. Instead of reviewing all the sparring, I will focus on a
few strong points made by each philosopher.

Craig gives five short arguments for the existence of God instead of
developing one argument in detail. This strategy allows him to develop
a brief cumulative case argument that, if successful, secures several
essential divine attributes instead of those derivable from only one
argument. Not surprisingly, given his work on this subject, Craig
begins with the kalam cosmological argument. This argument has a simple
deductive form: (1) What ever begins to exist has a cause of its
existence. (2) The universe began to exist. (3) Therefore, the universe
has a cause. To make his case, Craig must explore the nature of
infinity.

An actual infinite is a set of items that is literally limitless.
This contrasts with a potential infinite, which is always finite but
ever increasing. But the concept of the actual infinite generates
contradictions. If you subtract all the odd numbers the set of natural
numbers you are still left with an infinite number of numbers. Thus,
infinity minus infinity equals infinity. But if you subtract all the
numbers greater than two, you are left with three numbers. Now,
infinity minus infinity equals three. Craig comments: "In both of these
cases we have subtracted identical quantities from identical quantities
and come up with contradictory answers." The actual infinite is,
therefore, rendered impossible. Consequently, the number of past events
must be finite, and the world must have a beginning; we cannot affirm
the world has always existed. Furthermore, the beginning of the
universe is scientifically confirmed through Big Bang cosmology, which
claims that the universe exploded into existence out of nothing about
15 billion years ago. Since it is absurd to think that the universe
could pop into existence without a cause, Craig infers that the cause
of the universe was a timeless "personal agent who freely chooses to
create an effect in time without any prior determining conditions."

Craig offers four more crisp arguments: the existence of God makes
sense of (1) the fine-tuning of the universe, (2) the existence of
objective moral values, and (3) the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus. He concludes by arguing that (4) "God can be immediately—and
without argument—known and experienced as "properly basic." He warns:
"We mustn't so concentrate on the proofs for God that we fail to hear
the inner voice of God speaking to our own heart."

Sinnott-Armstrong responds in the tradition of David Hume by
claiming that even if Craig's arguments succeed, he has not established
the existence of an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal,
effective, and personal God. In fact, the creator, designer, and moral
lawgiver may be different finite beings. Not surprisingly, he proceeds
to give naturalistic explanations for all the data from which Craig
derives theistic explanations. He responds to the kalam argument by
claiming that the actual infinite is commonly employed in transfinite
mathematics and poses no problems. He also disputes Craig's
interpretation of the Big Bang by invoking other speculative
possibilities that do not require an ex nihilo origination of
the universe. He is particularly bothered by the notion that a timeless
cause (God) can produce a change in time, the creation.

Craig rebuts Sinnott-Armstrong by defending his cumulative case
approach, which collects several important theistic attributes from
several different arguments. If favorable, these arguments establish a
being who is a personal Creator, uncaused, eternal, changeless (at
least before creation), immaterial, enormously powerful, inestimably
intelligent, concerned with his creatures, good and loving, who exists
by metaphysical necessity, is the God and Father of Jesus Christ, and
is knowable. Craig, however, does not directly critique the claim that
each argument may refer to different deities. But this charge is ill
advised since these attributes are those historically stipulated by
monotheism (an argument for polytheism would be quite different) and
because one ought not multiply entities beyond what is required for a
simple and sufficient explanation.

Craig seems especially to get the better of Sinnott-Armstrong on the
origin of the universe. He responds that while actual infinites are
allowed in transfinite mathematics, this is an abstract conceptual
discourse that abides by certain artificial rules—a point not addressed
in his initial argument. He refines his claim by arguing that the
actual infinite cannot exist in space-time reality. (Craig usually hits
this home by arguing that even if an actual infinite exists, it could not be traversed
in time, since there would always be an infinite distance left to
travel. But he does not make that precise point here.) Craig argues
that the alternatives to the Big Bang presented by Sinnott-Armstrong
are either outmoded or too avant-garde to displace the Big Bang and its
metaphysical implications. Craig defends the idea that a timeless being
can produce an act in time—an argument I have never found
persuasive—but also admits the possibility that God existed in
"undifferentiated metaphysical time" (the view of Alan Padgett) prior
to the creation. In that case, God created within a condition of pure
duration, not atemporality. However, this duration, existing without
physical objects or laws, is not subject to any metric (time
measurement); therefore, it does not suffer the fate of comprising an
(impossible) actual infinite of discrete moments.

Sinnott-Armstrong's argument against the existence of God is
threefold. He argues that some kinds of evil are incompatible with an
all-good and all-powerful God, that an eternal God could not produce
effects in the temporal world, and that the prevalence of unbelief does
not comport with the existence of a God who supposedly wants people to
know him. The latter is really a subset of the problem of evil
(sometimes called "the epistemological problem of evil"), although
Sinnott-Armstrong does not frame it that way. His first argument seems
the most challenging.

In his response to Craig's moral argument for God, Sinnott-Armstrong
(rather unconvincingly) affirms that moral propositions such as "rape
is wrong" are true without further justification. This is pivotal to
his argument against God, because without the existence of objective
moral properties, the problem of evil cannot get off the ground.
Sinnott-Armstrong builds a thorough argument from evil against God by
critiquing each of ten possible strategies for justifying evils (such
as the compensations of heaven, that suffering may produce better
character, and so on). He limits his selection of evils to natural
evils (such as infant deaths), so that the free will defense cannot
directly address them. His arguments are nuanced, thorough, and
impressive. They attempt to put a crushing burden of proof on the
theist to show that all evils are adequately compensated by some good
that could not occur without them. For Sinnott-Armstrong, if any evil
is uncompensated or pointless, this counts decisively against the
existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, who surely would
justify any evil that God allows. Sinnott-Armstrong grants that some
evils are compatible with God's existence, but not the kinds he
discusses.

Craig retorts by arguing that a combination of possible
justifications for evils may cover all of them, even natural evils
affecting innocents. In this way he sketches a positive theodicy.
However, he rightly notes that given our finitude, we cannot justify
the reasons for every particular evil. Sinnott-Armstrong claims in his
response that the mere possibility of these justifications offers a
much less plausible argument than the notion that actual evils are
simply inadequately compensated for.

The numb of the argument boils down to Craig's formulation: 1. If
God exists, gratuitous suffering does not exist. 2. God exists. 3:
Therefore, gratuitous suffering does not exist. Craig's strategies for
God's possible justification of evils are merely speculative unless one
has previously made a strong argument for a rich theism through natural
theology. That is, background knowledge weighs crucially here. Since
Sinnott-Armstrong denies the success of Craig's arguments for God,
Craig's explanations for evil ring hollow and desperate to him. But if
one takes Craig's overall, fivefold case for God to be strong (as I
do), this would take the bite out of Sinnott-Armstrong's objections,
since an infinitely intelligent, good, and powerful God would have a
vast arsenal of reasons and strategies to employ with respect to
justifying evils. Since Craig argues forcefully—if briefly—for the
resurrection of Jesus as part of the cumulative case for God's
existence, it might have served him well to invoke the resurrection as
part of the solution to the problem of evil as well. If Jesus has been
raised victorious over death and sin, the world is not without hope.
Evil does not have the last word.

The debate over God will continue until the Last Day. Until then, God: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist, should help thoughtful inquiries begin to find their way concerning the Question of all questions.